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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24809494">Death &amp; Disaster.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/theweakestthing/pseuds/theweakestthing'>theweakestthing</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>????????, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Car Accidents, Drug Abuse, Existential Crisis, Existentialism, Explicit Sexual Content, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Literary References &amp; Allusions, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Recreational Drug Use, References to Depression, Road Trips</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 01:47:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,592</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24809494</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/theweakestthing/pseuds/theweakestthing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The street lights haloed Boris, spilling orange light through his hair and around his face. It was only then that Theo heard the music again, it was muffled through the windows of the car, at first he didn’t recognise what it was. Then the words ‘I’m not in love’ cut through Theo’s head and he knew exactly what it was. He didn’t miss the irony, though he wished he had.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>78</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Death &amp; Disaster.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title from Andy Warhol's Death and Disaster series.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Logically, Theo knew that the music was still playing, but as soon as the back of the car fishtailed out of control, he couldn’t hear it anymore. It was exactly like it was in the movies. All noise disappeared and everything moved in slow motion, the colours might have even drained from his vision, though Theo didn’t quite believe that one.</p><p>The car span through the lanes, thankfully there were no other cars on the road, it was well past 3am. To Theo though, it felt like they were moving through space. Zero gravity. Falling through the sky, his heart stopped, waiting for the inevitable impact.</p><p>No impact came, the car stopped against the shoulder of the road. Thankfully, both of them and the car were unscathed. Once everything stopped moving, the first thought that went through Theo’s head was that it was a good thing he hadn’t been holding anything, the second was <em>what the fuck</em>.</p><p>“What the fuck,” Theo muttered breathlessly. Heart hammering, adrenaline thrummed through his body, he felt like he was about to pass out. His hands were shaking against his thighs where they were gripping his pant legs.</p><p>“You touched the wheel,” Boris said. He tensely ran a hand through his hair, eyes skidding over to Theo. “Is no big thing Potter, we are alive yes?” He added, laughing that crazy broken sound that was too sharp to be honest.</p><p>“I did not touch the fucking wheel,” Theo said, exasperated and confused, wholly convinced in his conviction.</p><p>“You did,” Boris returned, moving the wheel uselessly as he spoke, smacking it as though he was showing Theo what he’d done.</p><p>“Fuck you,” Theo barked and clambered out of the car. His head was still spinning, insides swirling, his legs almost gave way as he closed the door with a slam. He made it about five steps away from the car before he dropped to his knees and vomited on the hard shoulder.</p><p>They could have died. They very easily could have died in the middle of nowhere in a city and state that he decidedly did not live in. They could have been seriously injured and trapped in the car for days until someone found them, until they died.</p><p>He heard Boris get out of the car, and close the door softly. The gravel crunched under his stylish boots. Theo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up as Boris stopped in front of him.</p><p>The street lights haloed Boris, spilling orange light through his hair and around his face. It was only then that Theo heard the music again, it was muffled through the windows of the car, at first he didn’t recognise what it was. Then the words ‘<em>I’m not in love</em>’ cut through Theo’s head and he knew exactly what it was. He didn’t miss the irony, though he wished he had.</p><p>What Theo had been thinking when he had agreed to go on a random road trip with Boris he didn’t know, but it was probably not a lot. Boris had turned up on his door step and asked him if he wanted to go for a drive. It had been three years since Amsterdam, Theo was a little more put together, a little less falling apart, a little less a junkie though maybe a little more of an alcoholic. Boris seemed about the same. And still Theo hadn’t thought about it for a second.</p><p>“Thought you were not such a lightweight Potter,” Boris said with a dry laugh, rubbing his hands together as his breath streamed out of his mouth like smoke twisting in the night air.</p><p>“My tolerance for near death experiences is surprisingly low actually,” Theo said flatly, wiping his hands off on his pants as he stood. “Should have never let you drive,” he added, though he didn’t exactly have a license himself.</p><p>“Don’t think either of us should drive,” Boris muttered, hand on Theo’s elbow, his thumb moved in circle against the hollow dimple.</p><p>“Are you high?” Theo asked, brows furrowed as he stared into Boris’ blown pupils.</p><p>“You did line off of back of my hand forty minutes ago and forget?” Boris returned, brow arched as he tilted his head to the side, fingers suddenly possessive around Theo’s arm.</p><p>“Right,” Theo breathed. Not for the first time throughout their nearly a day of driving, Theo wished that he’d ever actually learned how to drive, though the idea that he’d be any better than Boris at it was laughable.</p><p>They stood there for a moment, staring at each other, pulse pounding between them and Theo couldn’t figure out whether it was the drugs or the adrenaline or just the contact high of being around Boris that was making his heart race.</p><p>“Should find somewhere to sleep,” Boris said, matter-of-fact, stepping away from Theo. He made his way around the car and climbed back into the driver’s side.</p><p>“Yeah,” Theo breathed and pulled his phone out of his pocket as he got back into the car.</p><p>They found a motel off the highway as they approached some small town, florescent sign buzzing in the deep darkness. The light bled into the night around them. It left Theo feeling as though they had slipped into a pocket dimension, a world between things where they were hardly more than two men in a car, going somewhere though they had no real destination.</p><p>As soon as he got out of the car, Boris was lighting a cigarette, hunched over himself with the stick held between his lips as he failed get the shitty plastic lighter to ignite. Theo pulled the battered Zippo from his pocket, and held the flame out as he stepped into Boris’ space. He watched the smoke pool out of Boris’ nose as the other took the first drag.</p><p>Theo didn’t linger. That might mean something. Whenever Boris was around Theo was always trying to make sure that everything they did together didn’t mean anything. Their relationship was kind of built on that, that and drugs, alcohol, and mutually awful childhoods. So instead of reading anything into the arch of Boris’ brow, he left Boris standing in front of the car as he went to get them a room.</p><p>The office smelt of pot and the guy behind the counter was watching X-files on his phone. He barely lifted his head as Theo entered and approached the counter, he paused the show and set his phone down in that slow dejected manner that was evident in all burnouts throughout the country. Theo got a room and left the office as quickly as he could.</p><p>He shivered slightly as he stepped back out into the cold, twirling the room key on his finger. Boris passed him the cigarette and followed Theo as they made their way to their room. A silent conversation, the kind that they had always had since they were children, an acknowledgement of the cold and an offer of some warmth the only way they knew how to give it. Theo’s acceptance spoke more than his words ever would.</p><p>The room looked exactly like Theo had expected it to. Every movie and TV show he had ever seen all coalesced in one room. Wood panel on the walls, the beds were as far away from each other as they were from the walls, two lamps on the two bedside tables between the beds, soft light that was just the wrong side of orange. Theo would have bet money on the bathroom being some garish shade of peach, pink, green or orange. Every genre: noire, crime, romance, comedy, thriller, horror, drama and art house, it was all there in that one motel room. Maybe they could pick a genre and live out a different life in those four walls for the night.</p><p>Instead of that, Theo went straight to the bed closest to the door and dropped onto the edge, head in his hands. Maybe it was a drama, though knowing Boris and himself, it would probably turn into some sort of foreign art house movie about two young men living in debauchery as their lives crumble around their inability to admit their love for each other.</p><p>Theo swallowed and tipped backward onto the mattress. He wished that he had thought about it, this road trip, more than not at all. His life wasn’t exactly in the sink hole it had been in the last time Boris had torn through it. Things were objectively better, but Theo felt the same kind of listless and aimless malaise and ennui he always had. That could probably explain half of Theo’s reasoning. The other half was the simple fact that it was Boris who had asked him.</p><p>Following Boris, taking his lead and doing whatever it was he suggested, it reminded Theo of Alice chasing the white rabbit down the rabbit hole and getting lost in Wonderland. And just like in Alice’s tale, not everything was quite as whimsical as it had at first seemed.</p><p>All the reasons that Boris was a bad person to be around, especially for Theo, were still there. Theo never knew what was going to happen when Boris came around, though he never really asked, mostly because that was a waste of time. Boris had been obtusely vague when he’d suggested the road trip. That vagueness usually led to the most awkward, embarrassing, terrifying and dizzyingly bliss filled times of his life. He’d never felt emotions like he did when he was around Boris. The presence of drugs and alcohol was also all but guaranteed.</p><p>Boris dropped his duffle back at the end of the other bed and it clinked to the floor. Theo turned his head at the sound, face pressed against the stiff and rough sheets. For a second Theo wondered what the room would look like if you sprayed it with luminal and switched on a black light.</p><p>“My dad died in a car accident,” Theo said the moment the thought occurred to him, he turned his head back to the ceiling and wished he hadn’t snorted cocaine an hour ago.</p><p>“Yes,” Boris said, Theo could hear him pulling bottles out of the bag and setting them aside.</p><p>“We could have died,” Theo stated flatly, trying not to feel anything. He just wanted Boris to offer him a drink already.</p><p>“Yes, but did not, eh?” Boris said and rose from the floor, bottle of wine in his hand. He sat on the end of the bed beside Theo. It was a single. They couldn’t sit on it without touching each other, without crowding into each other’s space. “We are alive, let’s drink to it,” he added, patting Theo’s thigh as he opened the screw top.</p><p>“We could have died in Amsterdam,” Theo said, sitting up as Boris pressed the now open bottle of wine into Theo’s hands. He gladly took a large swig straight from the bottle, gulping it down, and was instantly sent back to his teenage bedroom. The scent of sweat and unwashed bodies filled the room as they passed cigarettes, pills and alcohol between them.</p><p>“Could die right now,” Boris said flippantly, shrugging as he flicked his hand out in the small space between them.</p><p>“So what the fuck am I doing with my life?” Theo muttered, holding out the bottle for Boris.</p><p>“Living it Potter,” Boris said and punched Theo in the shoulder as he took the bottle back, taking a hearty swig. He sighed sharply when he pulled it away from his mouth.</p><p>“I don’t feel like I’m living, I feel like I’m just existing, just coasting through my life,” Theo said, watching the way Boris swallowed and pretending that he wasn’t. “I think my life is just something that’s happening to me,” he went on, looking away to pull out a pack of cigarettes and his lighter from his pocket, and wondered why he was still wearing his coat.</p><p>“Potter, you are an awful philosopher,” Boris said, brows furrowed as he stared back at Theo, smirking with his fingers still wrapped around the neck of the wine bottle.</p><p>He was sitting there, in a motel, wearing his coat and jacket while smoking, Theo considered that he could probably pass off as a second or third rate Albert Camus. Suddenly he didn’t want to take off his coat anymore.</p><p>“Life really doesn’t have a point does it?” Theo sighed as he took a long drag off of his cigarette.</p><p>Boris looked into the bottle of wine, staring down the neck of it, before he spoke. Clearly referencing all the times they had gotten brain numbingly drunk and dizzyingly high as teenagers, wasted and blitzed in the desert, talking out of their asses until the stars disappeared and they fell asleep only to forget about it or pretend to in the morning. Neither of them was drunk enough for this sort of conversation and they were coming down from the high of the drugs. Nearly dying had a hell of a sobering effect, it also brought out the macabre from the deep recesses of Theo’s brainstem. It was almost like he was fourteen again. </p><p>“Forget about it. No meaning? We make meaning,” Boris said, hand on Theo’s upper arm, fingers flexing around the muscle as he leaned further into Theo’s space. His wine breath mixed with the nicotine swirling in the air between them. “The meaning is to have fun, find enjoyment, take the day and make it your bitch,” he went on, butchering several phrases as he shook Theo slightly.</p><p>Theo didn’t have a reply that wouldn’t worry Boris, that wouldn’t tear them out of the motel room and back to black out nights in the desert where Theo would lie in the middle of the road, begging Boris to leave him where he was.</p><p>The meaning of life to Theo seemed to be more about endurance than enjoyment. He spent his time enduring whatever had been handed to him and trying his best not to let everyone down, trying to live up to an idea of a boy that probably had never existed in his mother’s mind.</p><p>Instead of saying anything, Theo took the wine from Boris and drank deeply, allowing Boris to take the cigarette from between his fingers. He closed his eyes as he let the alcohol slide down his throat. When he opened them again, pulling the lip of the bottle away from his mouth, Boris’ eyes skittered away from him.</p><p>“So now what?” Theo asked, licking his lips as he watched Boris take a drag off of his cigarette.</p><p>“We need music,” Boris muttered. He put the cigarette in his mouth, patted himself down, and eventually pulled his phone out of his inside pocket.</p><p>They didn’t usually get high or drunk without something else going on in the background. Theo remembered lying on his bed with Boris, pressed together down one side as they shared earphones, listening to whatever was on Theo’s iPod. It was probably the most honestly intimate they ever got. Most nights they sat on the floor, in front of the couch, yammering away at each other as whatever movie was played on the TV before them. Eventually they would end up outside waxing poetic by the moonlight as it bounced off the stagnant water in the pool.</p><p>Boris scrolled through his phone, fingers tapping against his screen until music came through the tiny speakers, it only took a moment for Theo to realise what was playing. He scoffed as Katy Perry announced that she’d kissed a girl and she had liked it.</p><p>Theo took the cigarette from between Boris’ lips. He watched Boris watch him as he placed it between his own, blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth, and tried to ignore the upbeat rhythm playing from the phone balanced on Boris’ thigh. When he offered the bottle back to Boris it took him a while to notice. His fingers slid over Theo’s as he took the wine from his hand, his skin was slightly calloused and cold, Theo told himself that he only noticed because his own hands were clammy.</p><p>“I need something that will make me forget the fact that we almost died and my life has no meaning,” Theo said.</p><p>He leaned back, hands pressed against the mattress slightly behind him, cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It was still scratching at his mind. The thought of them dying, out on the middle of nowhere because they’d been stupid enough to get behind the wheel high as a kite, it left him feeling hollow. What would they have left behind? Theo didn’t know about Boris, but he himself would leave behind at least one person who somewhat depended on him. Kitsey and Pippa would be fine without him, though Mrs. Barbour might be upset for a while, she still had her family. Theo didn’t really have one, he only had Hobie. The only life he had seemingly affected as much as Hobie’s was Boris’ and that was negligible. The impression he left would fade as quickly as the blow they had snorted at the gas station a couple of hours ago, mouth and nose pressed to the back of Boris’ hand.</p><p>Theo started thinking about Albert Camus again and shrugged off his coat.</p><p>“Your life has meaning and no one died,” Boris muttered, he took a sip of wine before he spoke again, “does not matter, we’re alive, you have meaning,” he added, flippantly, hand flicking out to grab at Theo again. The pads of his fingers slid over the smoother fabric of Theo’s suit jacket. Hand around Theo’s elbow, holding onto him as though he was in danger of slipping off the bed, grabbing out in the near darkness to catch him just like when they were children.</p><p>“And what’s that then?” Theo asked, leaning toward Boris, he couldn’t do much else lest he actually slide off the mattress.</p><p>“More alcohol and more pills before we reveal secrets of the universe,” Boris said and finished off the bottle. A dry laugh caught in Theo’s throat, he turned his head away to take another drag off of his cigarette. It didn’t exactly do much for Theo besides help him forget.</p><p>Boris jumped off the bed and went back to the duffle bag. The duffle bag was an enigma to Theo, it meant that Boris had either planned this ‘getaway’ or he just generally went around with that kind of paraphernalia in the trunk of his car all the time, Theo very much doubted that it was the latter. Boris rifled through the bag as his phone continued to play music from their teenage years where it was left on the bed sheets.</p><p>Theo wondered what it was exactly about the crash that was bothering him so much. He had nearly died a lot of times. There were two times that stood out most starkly. The museum was always the first that came to mind, the dust and horror came to him easily and left his ears ringing, a loss so shattering that it tore into the future and changed the person he would become. The second was the parking lot. Wet concrete, blood and gun powder, Theo could still smell it sometimes as he woke from a dream of a lost painting and lost lives. It still scared him to know that he would kill for Boris, without hesitation, and it scared him to know that he’d do it again. He knew it, felt the sureness of it as he stared at Boris.</p><p>A bottle of vodka appeared along with a baggy of pills, Boris held them out in front of him as he smirked at Theo.</p><p>He knew it would be easier to slip away into oblivion than to think about why he was so rattled. Anything would be better than thinking about how easy it was to lose the people you love, anything was bliss compared to slipping into the whirlpool of what if’s, getting dragged into the undertow and drowning in his thoughts. Theo took the vodka eagerly.</p><p>They sat further up the bed, backs against the headboard, touching all the way down one side. Again just like when they were kids. The music was still playing. Boris’ phone was caught somewhere between them and the sound was muffled. Theo crushed the cigarette end out on the bedside table, since he didn’t see an ash tray in sight.</p><p>Boris cut the pills (most likely Molly) into lines with some sort of loyalty card on the back of a bible he’d found in the bedside table. Theo thought that this was exactly the sort of thing that would happen in a movie about American's made by French or Italian people. The lights were too bright and made Boris’ skin shine, almost like a marble statue, brought to life by the hands of Michelangelo. Theo watched Boris, body bathed in the light of what was probably a dollar store bulb behind a paper thin lamp shade, as the other bit his tongue in concentration.</p><p>Theo found his hand sweating against the cool neck of the now near empty bottle of vodka. He left it leaning against his stomach as he pulled out his wallet, grabbed a dollar and started to curl it up, ready and waiting.</p><p>“You’re not allowed to die,” Theo murmured, slumped half way down the bed, lips loosened by the sheer amount of alcohol they had consumed in the last fifteen minutes. “At least you’re not allowed to before I do,” he added and swallowed the last dregs of the vodka. Boris took the dollar bill from Theo’s waiting fingers and bent over himself to snort the line away, dragging the dollar over the bible, the word sacrilegious came to Theo’s mind.</p><p>“Very selfish,” Boris returned, brows furrowed as he stared down at Theo, “I would not allow you to die if I can help it,” he said, rubbing at his nose with his knuckle. He passed the dollar to Theo and held the bible flat in his lap. It only took another moment, with Theo bent over Boris’ lap, and the powder was gone from the black cover of the book.</p><p>Theo leaned back against the headboard, sniffing and sighing as the drugs hit his system, eyelids fluttering as he started up at Boris. The other man’s visage drowned in too much light, it bounced off the scar over Boris’ eyebrow, and something old and ugly twisted in Theo’s gut at the sight of it.</p><p>“Then we should go together,” Theo said, words half mumbled against the headboard. He was probably two drinks away from suggesting a suicide pact, he wondered if he had done that before, though he wasn’t going to ask Boris about it.</p><p>“None of this,” Boris said, he captured Theo’s chin in his hand, fingers dipping into the other’s cheeks. “No more, Potter, we are alive so we live, death is for the dead,” he went on, thumb stroking over the barely there stubble on Theo’s chin.</p><p>“That literally makes no sense,” Theo said, words jumbled and voice muffled from the way Boris was still holding his face.</p><p>“Why care about making sense when you could just live,” Boris muttered, sliding down the headboard toward Theo, his hand fell from Theo's face and dropped onto Theo’s shoulder. He pressed their foreheads together. Their breaths mingled together, stale alcohol in the air between them, it tasted heady though that might have just been the Molly coursing through Theo’s system.</p><p>It was only a moment before they were kissing.</p><p>Boris moved over him like a dream, like silk, like a man desperate to touch someone that he might have loved, might still love and who might have loved him back, might still love him. Teenage dreams finally personified. Sighing and shuddering at every touch, head filled with finally, finally, why didn’t this happen sooner? Their bodies shook against each other.</p><p>Fingers moved up the side of his neck, sliding into the hair at his nape, pulling Theo’s head back so that they could deepen the kiss. Back arched from the way Boris was bending him backward.</p><p>For a moment he thought that maybe this was where he was supposed to die, burnt out in a motel, far away from his normal life, overdosed and blue lipped in Boris’ arms. Maybe he needed to sober up a little. Maybe he needed to throw himself into the moment that was happening to him.</p><p>“Stop dreaming, am right here,” Boris murmured against Theo’s lip, his tongue flicked out, lapping lightly at the corner of Theo’s mouth, tasting the salt on his skin.</p><p>Boris’ fingers alighted on his shirt and Theo pulled the ends of it out of his pants, though it was difficult with Boris still over him, still kissing him with a reverence he was sure he didn’t deserve. Eventually he was stripped out of his jacket and shirt, tie long gone. His bare skin was pressed against the scratchy sheets and Boris’ hands, pressing down upon him, touching him as though he were trying to put every inch of him to memory.</p><p>Theo thought about turning off the music, since it was obnoxious and definitely didn’t fit the mood, but the phone was trapped somewhere between them and Theo was pretty certain that the battery would run out sometime soon. At least he hoped so. Eminem didn’t exactly turn him on.</p><p>All thoughts of music and the music itself left his mind the instance Boris ground the heel of his palm against Theo’s growing erection. Eyes rolling back into his head, Theo groaned into Boris’ mouth. His legs quaked between them.</p><p>More clothes were shed, thrown to the floor, and the phone somehow found its way there too. Whether or not the phone was still playing music, Theo didn’t know or care, he just wanted Boris to keep touching him. It was another echo from their past. An almost mirror image of many dry nights clutching at each other in the darkness, hoping that Boris would know what he wanted without him having to say it. And still Theo wouldn’t say it.</p><p>Boris could have made him say it, finally voice everything that he wanted, make him beg for it maybe. A few choice words in a certain tone mixed with the use of his given name might have had him shaking. Boris would never do that though, because Boris never had.</p><p>Maybe it was due to Boris’ own shame, which Theo had never spent any real amount of time thinking about, he had too much of his own to reckon with. Boris could have been too scared to ask Theo what he wanted, to voice his own wants just like Theo was, for all he knew. It didn’t matter, they both knew what they wanted.</p><p>Skin to skin. Theo sighed the moment Boris dropped down against him, their bodies sliding together, more lucid than he had ever been during any of these moments. Fingers lost in Boris’ curls, whining as they came together. Kisses that reminded Theo of blows where they had pulled their punches, hoping to bruise, to leave an impression without truly hurting each other.</p><p>“Theo,” Boris murmured, voice low and rough with desire, his accent broke over the two syllables. Theo struggled to keep the groan in his throat and only nodded in reply.</p><p>Instead of saying anything more, Boris pressed the pads of his fingers against Theo’s lips. He didn’t push forward and just left them sitting there. It was a question or as close as either of them got to asking these sorts of questions. Theo opened his mouth and let Boris press his fingers inside, a taste of nicotine, alcohol and sweat on his tongue, he wrapped his lips around the two digits.</p><p>Theo tried not to shrink away when Boris slipped his now wet fingers between his legs. Boris smothered Theo’s discomfort with his mouth, using his other hand to keep Theo in the moment, mixing the strangeness with a familiar pleasure. He wondered why they never did this in Antwerp.</p><p>Then all thought fled his mind again as Boris’ fingers brushed something deep inside him. It was hard to focus on anything other than Boris. He quaked as the other moved against him, moved inside him. Theo’s body shuddered with relief when their bodies finally came together. It was the consummation of long desired yearning. He was finally allowing himself something he had wanted for more than a decade, and that thought alone was woefully pathetic, but the relief was immense.</p><p>Every word he thought of saying, everything he couldn’t say, every word that was stuck to the film of his tongue was muffled softly into the pillow. Theo shuddered as Boris dragged his hand up the back of his thigh. He felt like a boat out at sea, lost in a storm with vicious waves rolling against him, pressing him deeper into the ocean. Shaking and covered in sweat, drenched down to the bone.</p><p>The waves crashed over him, drowned in the overwhelming wake of his orgasm, struggling to catch his breath as Boris stroked him through it. Moaning through his gritted teeth. Boris pulled out of him, flipped Theo onto his back, glasses skewed across his face but in such a way that he could still see through them. With a firm hand around Theo’s thigh and the other pressed against his hip, Boris jack hammered into him. Pounding him down into mattress. Theo whined, sound caught in the back of his throat, body oversensitive as Boris sent shocks straight through him.</p><p>Lying in his own wet patch, Theo watched with open awe as Boris pulled out and took himself in hand, like a sinner staring up at the statue of a saint as he prayed on his knees in church. Boris came, streaking over Theo’s stomach, and promptly half slumped over Theo. Kissing him lazily, fingers carding through Theo’s lank hair.</p><p>Theo wasn’t drunk enough to simply pass out, the terror adrenaline was still working its way through his body, and the Molly high just wasn’t enough to keep his mind from reeling. He’d always ran away from himself, from recognising that this was what he wanted, recognising that he wanted Boris. He had woken up many a morning and rushed to the toilet, puking up his guts along with his shame. But he could feel Boris’ pulse beneath his fingertips and that was somehow grounding. Just knowing that Boris was alive was comfort enough to stop his usual fear, his presence was soothing in the same way that it always had been.</p><p>They weren’t home, there was no way that they could run into anyone he knew out here, and they were safe inside the bubble that was their motel room. Theo had always felt some kind of safe with Boris, like they could make it through anything as long as they were together, though they were never safe when they were together.</p><p>Boris sat up and groaned, dried sweat shone on his body, and ran a hand through his matted hair.</p><p>“Shower?” He asked staring down at Theo.</p><p>For the first time, after all the years of feeling nothing but shame and terror after every sexual interaction, Theo felt surprisingly fine. Of course he wasn’t fine, but it was close enough. It was strangely refreshing. When they were kids, he and Boris just passed out afterward or fucked around getting high in the shower in their underwear. Now they were adults, and they could fuck around in the shower without their underwear.</p><p>“Yeah,” Theo replied with a short nod, wincing as he sat up.</p><p>He slowly rose from the bed, the sheets stuck to his back and Theo groaned as he peeled himself free. Boris laughed as he watched him, holding his stomach and offered Theo no help.</p><p>“Fuck off,” he muttered. He ignored the usual shame in favour of running after Boris with the threat of hugging him.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Theo had been right. The bathroom was an obnoxious shade of peach. He wanted to mention it to Boris, but the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth, not with the way the bare light bulb was raining light down upon Boris’ body. Cascading over him, it highlighted his frame and cut him in stark shadows. It left Theo breathless. It left him thinking of the Dutch and Italian masters, though the bathroom was probably too bright for their liking. Caravaggio would definitely not have approved. </p><p>Whatever he had wanted to say suddenly didn’t matter. Theo crowded Boris into the shower, fingers sliding over every inch of alabaster skin he could reach. They shuddered against each other, as though time was slipping away, as though the world was ending outside their motel room.</p><p>Eventually they managed to wash themselves. Though by that time the water had turned cold, and Boris was laughing again as Theo’s teeth began to chatter, even as he helped Theo wash his body clean.</p><p>Once they were out of the shower, Theo was eager to leave the bathroom. He barely touched himself with the towel, he didn’t know what kind of fungal infection he was inviting by just holding it in his hands, and it felt like tempting fate.</p><p>He tried not to think, tried not to let his mind run away from him, but it always did. They were slowly and nicely coming down from the high, but they were coming down all the same. When they left the motel in the morning, or more likely the next afternoon, things would go back to normal. At least that was what Theo worried would happen.</p><p>All his life, Theo had desperately tried to stop anything from changing, to stem the flow of water leaking out of his fractured life. It had all been in vain. His life had been changed, and he had never truly accepted that fact. Now Theo wanted to change it, to shape it in a way that would make more it more enjoyable, a life worth living.</p><p>He jumped into his boxers and pants, an effort to find normalcy, to slip back into the person he was always trying to be. Despite how much he hated it.</p><p>“Let’s go to California,” Theo murmured, dropping onto the edge of the bed as he watched Boris walk back and forth, drying his hair with the motel’s terrifying pastel pink towel. “Sit together on Venice beach,” he went on, picking at his pant leg, nails scratching at the fabric over his knee, “share vodka from a water bottle.” It was a romantic idea and Theo felt like a naïve idealist even as he said it.</p><p>“Long way to California,” Boris said, finally stopping in front of Theo.</p><p>“Yeah, so?” Theo replied, he could feel the ground beneath him giving way, like the beginnings of a mud slide.</p><p>“You have life Potter, old poofter and shop to look after,” Boris said and threw the towel on the floor, standing in nothing but his boxers. Theo tried not to watch the way the drops of water from Boris’ hair trailed down his chest, slid over his abs and disappeared in the fabric of his underwear.</p><p>“They’ll be fine,” Theo said, brows furrowed as stared up at Boris, he hadn’t expected the other to be the voice of reason.</p><p>“Not what it sounded like last time we spoke,” Boris returned, looking at Theo like he could see straight through him, as though he was made of cellophane. Boris had always been able to see through him, and as they got older he was better at making Theo know it.</p><p>“That was three years ago,” Theo muttered.</p><p>“Has all changed?” Boris asked, fingertips soft against the tip of Theo’s chin, forcing the other to look up at him.</p><p>Theo swallowed, no, not a lot had changed. Sure the shop was in a much better place than it had been, but the two weeks he’d planned to spend with Boris was about as much time as he could take off in a row before things got tight.</p><p>“No,” Theo said finally, his voice cracked over the word, sliding out of Boris’ hold.</p><p>“So what? Go to California and leave your life to ruin?” Boris asked, brows raised and head tilted toward Theo, waiting for the other’s answer.</p><p>There was no reality in which they could be together for longer than a handful of weeks at the very most. Boris had his life and Theo had his own, they were separate lives, the kinds of lives that could never truly overlap. It was an indisputable fact. No matter what had happened between them, where they might have gone after the fork in their lives that was the death of Theo’s father, there was no way that they could have built a life that accommodated the other. All fight fled him at this thought, at the acknowledgement of this one truth between them settled in. He could have cried. Mourning the loss of something he never could have had.</p><p>“I take you back to New York tomorrow,” Boris said, still standing before Theo.</p><p>“Yeah,” Theo murmured, nodded slightly. He picked his shirt off the floor, tried to shake out the creases, and slipped it on. It felt like he was going back into hiding. He felt the same way when he had flown back home from Antwerp. As though he was coming out of a haze, stepping away from those easy days spent with the only person that truly knew him and back into a life that he had thoroughly ruined, just to make atonements until the end of time.</p><p>“Forget about it for now,” Boris said, like he always did, “let’s go to bed.” His fingers curled around Theo’s upper arms, he pulled Theo off of the bed they’d marred and pushed him down onto the relatively clean mattress.</p><p>There wasn’t enough space on the single bed for the both of them, but that had never stopped them before. Laid on their sides, Boris curled against Theo’s back, just like old times. Boris’ arm was rested over Theo’s waist. His breath swept up the nape of Theo’s neck, an echoing gasp of a ghost that had followed Theo to every bed he ever slept in after Vegas.</p><p>He was pretty sure that he had read somewhere that death often times incited a strong desire to feel alive in those that lived through it. That desire was most usually translated into lust. It was a desperate need to cling to another person, to feel alive and feel another life against you, to chase away the reaper. Theo supposed that they might have participated in this age old ritual that night. However, this night was a smaller part of a different ritual that had begun the moment they had met and would only end when one of them died. And despite the wild difference in the inherent danger in their respective lives, Theo was pretty damn sure that he’d be the first to die out of the both them. The reaper was forever whispering in his ear. Though, knowing how the universe loved to toy with him, Boris would probably turn up dead on the front page of the New York Times, shocking Theo at the breakfast table.</p><p>The thought was almost too much to bear, he’d lived through it two times before, and he knew you never got over it. Loss wasn’t something you could ‘get over’. Loss was something that stayed with you for the rest of your life, like a scar on your soul, eventually you got used to the ache.</p><p>It was hard to breathe around that imagined loss. Losing Boris would mean so much more than losing someone he truly loved, maybe the only person besides his mother and Hobie that he wholly fully loved, it was much more than just that. It would signal the complete and total loss of the last person Theo thought he had been. The small rebel, the reckless child that had been so awfully eager to die just to see his mother again, the neglected degenerate running around in the desert, the boy who shook with fear and denial of the strongest love he’d ever felt, the kid who had clung to a painting and dared to dream of something better for himself. The last time he’d really dreamed about a future he would have been truly invested in was the last time he had genuinely thought that Boris just might follow him to New York. It would prove, once and for all, that this was something that could not be. Theo didn’t know if he could stand that much grief.</p><p>“Shh, Potter, sleep,” Boris murmured, mouthing into Theo’s hair, lips against his crown, “is me, only me.”</p><p>Theo let the words sweep over him and pull him under into sleep.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The light was soft as Theo opened his eyes, which added to the affect of his out of focus vision. His mouth was dry. It was horrifically close to the taste of dust and terror, along with the headache pressing in on his skull, Theo could already hear the tinnitus coming on. It was just the wrong side of too warm. Boris was wrapped around him, the same way he always did when they were kids, arms and legs hooked over him and tangled with Theo’s.</p><p>Slowly, he extricated himself from Boris’ hold, clambered off the mattress and grabbed his glasses off of the bedside table. With his glasses on, Theo could see the state of the room. It looked just as wrecked as Theo felt.</p><p>Bottles littered the bedside table next to the bed they had started the night on. The Bible sat there too, white streaks smeared across its cover. Dry stains of alcohol and body fluids marred the twisted sheets. Their clothes littered the floor. Boris’ shirt was caught on the edge of the mattress, his coat was half under the bed and one of Theo’s shoes was sat atop the collar, Theo’s other shoe was near door where Boris had flung it, Boris’ dark shirt was hung over the lamp and Theo’s tie was draped over it, Boris’ tight jeans were tangled around his fancy boots on the floor, both of their socks sat limply on the mattress, their suit jackets were off the other side of the bed and Theo’s coat sat at the bottom of the bed where he’d left it.</p><p>He wasn’t exactly sure why he’d gone into the bathroom. There wasn’t any way Theo was going to use anything in there to clean himself with. He should have brought some stuff with him, at least his toothbrush and maybe a change of clothes, some deodorant too. Anything that wasn’t the grand total of nothing he had brought. But that was how things were with Boris, he came in like a hurricane and swept Theo away.</p><p>Theo settled for splashing his face with water, slopped as much as he could into his mouth with just his hands and washed his hands with the soap because soap couldn’t be dirty as far as he knew, and left the room.</p><p>Boris was awake when he re-entered the room, stretching out across the bed like a house cat. His pale skin, marred by a hard life, lied out against the horrendous sheets. The women of Francesco Hayez’s paintings came to mind.</p><p>Theo got dressed, first doing up his shirt, in an effort to run away from himself, as though he could shut his own desire inside his clothes. His shirt was woefully creased from the way he’d slept in it, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. He tucked it into his pants and went for his socks, sitting on the edge of the bed Boris wasn’t currently in, as he pulled them on. Next were his shoes, bent over himself to tie the laces. When he got up from the bed, to reach over for his tie, Boris was out of the bed and standing in nothing but his underwear. Theo was thinking about Caravaggio again.</p><p>Boris grabbed the tie before Theo could and stepped into his personal space. He looped the tie around Theo’s neck, leaned up onto the tips of his toes to lift Theo’s collar, even as the other leant down to meet him. Boris’ fingers were quick and nimble as he knotted the tie.</p><p>“What’s with this face?” Boris asked, looking up into Theo’s eyes as he flattened the tie against his torso.</p><p>“What face?” Theo returned, rooted the spot by the shine in Boris’ eyes.</p><p>“Your face,” Boris shot back, smiling, showing those American whites.</p><p>“There’s nothing wrong with my face,” Theo said flatly, brows furrowed as he stared down at the other.</p><p>“Always so serious,” Boris muttered, lightly slapping Theo’s cheeks.</p><p>Boris didn’t wait to hear whatever bullshit was about to come out of Theo’s mouth and kissed him instead. It was a deep and slow kiss, it felt like honey sliding down his mouth. His fingers slid along Theo’s jaw and disappeared into his hair. Theo put his hand on Boris’ upper arms, the pads of his fingers slid over the familiar scar, a reminder that they were survivors. Boris undressed him again.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The drive back to New York was cold and quiet. Radiohead played on the radio and Theo genuinely considered jumping out of the car just to escape the warm memories that bubbled up inside him.</p><p>Sometimes Theo wondered what would have happened to Boris if they had never met. Theo knew that he himself probably would have turned out much the same, though he probably wouldn’t have known how to shoplift. Boris might have been the same or he might have been completely different, it was hard to tell what affect Theo had had on his life. There was a part of Theo that knew that he was most likely the most positive and loving relationship that Boris had ever had. Theo wanted to shove his fist into his throat just to chase that particular thought away.</p><p>When they got into the city proper, it started to rain and hard, the swish of the wipers was barely enough to keep the windshield clear for a few seconds. Theo considered it a small miracle that they made it to the shop without another accident.</p><p>It wasn’t necessary, but Boris followed him out of the car and walked him up to the steps of the shop. The rain was bearing down on them. Theo flicked his collar up against it, hunched as they walked into the downpour, as though that would help at all.</p><p>With his keys in hand, Theo turned back to Boris, goodbyes on his tongue. All of that fled his mind when his eyes met Boris’. There he was, all Theo had never dared to dream for because it was too painful to hope, standing on his doorstep. How was he supposed to just let him go again? How was he supposed to leave again?</p><p>“Stay in contact,” Theo said, rain pounding the sidewalk as it poured around them, soaking through his wool coat. It was a demand, though it came out like a plea.</p><p>“Of course,” Boris said, almost turning away from Theo as he said it, flippantly waving his hand out between them.</p><p>“Promise,” Theo urged and caught Boris by the elbow, pulling him back.</p><p>“Hmm,” Boris hummed, noncommittal.</p><p>“Promise that you’ll stay in contact, that if you die, I’ll know,” Theo pushed on, a different and more powerful kind of fear overriding the old one, “promise that I’ll know whether you’re dead or alive Boris because I can’t go through life not knowing whether you’re dead or alive, I can’t lie awake thinking about where you might be,” he went on, rambling, all but saying that he constantly thought of Boris and nearly nothing else.</p><p>He didn’t know he was crying until Boris reached up to wipe the tears from his face. Theo was suddenly assaulted by a memory of a half caught scene of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. He desperately didn’t want to be Audrey Hepburn.</p><p>“I promise, Potter, I promise,” Boris muttered, hands cupping Theo’s face.</p><p>Theo couldn’t reply, his throat was thick with sobs and noises he desperately tried to keep inside. The only thing he could think to do was to press their foreheads together. Their noses slid against each other, lips almost close enough to touch, if he just turned his head slightly they would be kissing. Theo didn’t think he could let him go if he kissed him.</p><p>“Don’t die before I get to see you again,” Theo murmured, like a prayer, against Boris’ lips.</p><p>“No dying either, Potter, have not forgotten how you can be,” Boris returned, gripping Theo’s neck as the rain slid over his fingers.</p><p>“As long as I know you’re still here,” Theo said meaning in the world and not New York, sure that Boris would know that, it was as close to a promise as he could ever get.</p><p>Boris kissed him, quick and hard, just like he had back in Vegas. Goodbye. Theo wondered if either of them would keep their promise as he watched Boris climb back into the car. This time it was Boris getting in the car, driving off, leaving Theo on the sidewalk. Theo stayed where he was. Even after Boris’ car had slid out of view, he was drenched to the bone and was definitely going to catch a cold, unsure whether they would ever see each other again.</p><p>He remembered that Albert Camus had died in a car crash. He remembered that Boris had a driving violation in Amsterdam. He remembered the crash they’d had over twenty four hours ago. It was raining.</p><p>Theo tried to shrug the thought off and went inside the shop. He took his shoes and coat off in the entrance way, hoping to leave as little mess as possible, and softly made his way to his room. All the while he prayed that he wouldn’t bump into Hobie until the morning. He wasn’t ready for that conversation, especially since he was still dripping wet. Once in his bedroom, Theo peeled his clothes off, grabbed a towel, a change of clothes and slipped into the bathroom.</p><p>The bathroom where he’d once tried to kill himself.</p><p>The rain was pelting rhythmically against the windowpane, as though it were trying to draw Theo’s attention.</p><p>He shivered as he watched the blurred lines of the water run down the pane. Theo thought about wandering out, just to see what he could find, to see if maybe there was a different life out there that wasn’t so inherently miserable. He coughed hard against the back of his hand. A headache was coming on and he didn’t know whether it was the stark lights of the bathroom, the cold that was undoubtedly sneaking into his sinuses or just the old trauma pulling him under again.</p><p>He remembered that Leo Tolstoy had died of pneumonia after stealing away secretly into the night.</p><p>Theo went to bed, beaten up copy of The Idiot rested over his chest, waiting for something he knew probably wasn’t coming. Then the doorbell, the one he’d rung himself at thirteen, rang.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Neither of these boys should ever be allowed behind the wheel, drive safely kids.<br/>Anyways, thanks for reading! You can catch me on tumblr @ theweakestthing and twitter @ th_weakestthing<br/>See ya on the next one. x</p></blockquote></div></div>
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